A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove, by John Spong

The Western is surely one of the most enduring and characteristically American genres. Its exponents in cinema have included such distinguished filmmakers as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood. Originating in William “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s “Wild West Show” and the dime novels of the nineteenth century, and accorded greater cultural status by novels such as Owen Wister’s The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains(1902) and Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), the Western has continued to stimulate literary output, inspiring writers as diverse as Louis L’Amour, John Seelye and E. L. Doctorow.